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ML:Our rights are not a grant from anyone. Our rights are our due rights, and there is a maturity to Tunisian women now that gives us the right to be political actors, social actors and economic actors. We don’t need any regime, or any political man to guarantee our rights. We need only to be citizens and to speak loudly of our rights, and Tunisian women are doing just that. Women are very active, proactive, and sometimes even aggressive in saying, ‘these are our rights and we will not give them up.’ So, the best guarantee is the level of awareness, social awareness and political awareness of Tunisian women. This level of awareness is now a fact for Tunisian women. Sometimes we have debates, and we have women who express fears about losing their rights. I think this is a healthy sign. When we fear for something, it means it is valuable, and it means we are aware of its value. But, I have to say, beware of alarmist speech, and the discourse that focuses only on fear. It has been used to make us fear our Islamic identity, and to suppress democracy, and to keep people under pressure, under, let’s say dictatorship. We have to fear for our rights, we have to guarantee to act together as Tunisian women to preserve them, but we cannot base our politics on fear.
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